There was Earth gravity on 6, minus a few percent, and also a multi-species restaurant bar. I was too tired to wonder about the domed boxes I saw on some of the tables. I wobbled over to a table, turned on the privacy bubble and tapped tee tee hatch nex ool, carefully. That code was my life. A wrong character could broil me, freeze me, flatten me, or have me drinking liquid methane or breathing prussic acid.
An Earthlike environment formed around me. I peeled off my equipment and sank into a web, sighing with relief. I still ached everywhere. What I really needed was sleep. But it had been glorious!
A warbling whistle caused me to look up. My translator said, “Sir or madam, what can I bring you?”
The bartender was a small, spindly Hroydan, and his environment suit glowed at dull red heat. I said, “Something alcoholic.”
“Alcohol? What is your physiological type?”
“Tee tee hatch nex ool.”
“Ah. May I recommend something? A liqueur, Opal Fire.”
Considering the probable distance to the nearest gin-and-tonic…“Fine. What proof is it?” I heard his translator skip a word, and amplified: “What percent ethyl alcohol?”
“Thirty-four, with no other metabolic poisons.”
About seventy proof? “Over water ice, please.”
He brought a clear glass bottle. The fluid within did indeed glitter like an opal. Its beauty was the first thing I noticed. Then, the taste, slightly tart, with an overtone that can’t be described in any human language. A crackling aftertaste, and a fire spreading through my nervous system. I said, “That’s wonderful! What about side effects?”
“There are additives to compensate: thiamin and the like. You will feel no ugly aftereffects,” the Hroydan assured me.
“They’d love it on Earth. Mmm…what’s it cost?”
“Quite cheap. Twenty-nine chirp notes per flagon. Transport costs would be up to the chirpsithra. But I’m sure Chignthil Interstellar would sell specs for manufacture.”
“This could pay for my whole trip.” I jotted the names: chirp characters for Opal Fire and Chignthil Interstellar. The stuff was still dancing through my nervous system. I drank again, so it could dance on my taste buds too.
To hell with sleep; I was ready for another new experience. “These boxes—I see them on all the tables. What are they?”
“Full-sensory entertainment devices. Cost is six chirp notes for use.” He tapped keys and a list appeared: titles, I assumed, in alien script. “If you can’t read this, there is voice translation.”
I dithered. Tempting; dangerous. But a couple of these might be worth taking back. Some of my customers can’t use anything I stock; they pay only cover charges. “How versatile is it? Your customers seem to have a lot of different sense organs. Hey, would this thing actually give me alien senses?”
The bartender signalled negative. “The device acts on your central nervous system; I assume you have one? There at the top? Ah, good. It feeds you a story skeleton, but your own imagination puts you in context and fills in the background details. You live a programmed story, but largely in terms familiar to you. Mental damage is almost unheard of.”
“Will I know it’s only an entertainment?”
“You might know from the advertisements. Shall I show you?” The Hroydan raised the metal dome on a many-jointed arm and poised it over my head. I felt the heat emanating from him. “Perhaps you would like to walk through an active volcano?” He tapped two buttons with a black metal claw, and everything changed.
The Vollek merchant pulled the helmet away from my head. He had small, delicate-looking arms, and a stance like a tyrannosaur: torso horizontal, swung from the hips. A feathery down covered him, signalling his origin as a flightless bird. “How did you like it?”
“Give me a minute.” I looked about me. Afternoon sunlight spilled across the tables, illuminating alien shapes. The Draco Tavern was filling up. It was time I got back to tending bar. It had been nearly empty (I remembered) when I agreed to try this stunt.
I said, “That business at the end—?”
“We end all of the programs that way when we sell to Level Four civilizations. It prevents disorientation.”
“Good idea.” Whatever the reason, I didn’t feel at all confused. Still, it was a hell of an experience. “I couldn’t tell it from the real thing.”
“The advertisement would have alerted an experienced user.”
“You’re actually manufacturing these things on Earth?”
“Guatemala has agreed to license us. The climate is so nice there. And so I can lower the price per unit to three thousand dollars each.”
“Sell me two,” I said. It’d be a few years before they paid for themselves. Maybe someday I really would have enough money to ride the chirpsithra liners…if I didn’t get hooked myself on these full-sensory machines. “Now, about Opal Fire. I can’t believe it’s really that good—”
“I travel for Chignthil Interstellar too. I have sample bottles.”
“Let’s try it.”
LIMITS
I never would have heard them if the sound system hadn’t gone on the fritz. And if it hadn’t been one of those frantically busy nights, maybe I could have done something about it…
But one of the big chirpsithra passenger ships was due to leave Mount Forel Spaceport in two days. The chirpsithra trading empire occupies most of the galaxy, and Sol system is nowhere near its heart. A horde of passengers had come early in fear of being marooned. The Draco Tavern was jammed.
I was fishing under the counter when the noises started. I jumped. Two voices alternated: a monotonal twittering, and a bone-vibrating sound like a tremendous door endlessly opening on rusty hinges.
The Draco Tavern used to make the Tower of Babel sound like a monolog, in the years before I got this sound system worked out. Picture it: thirty or forty creatures of a dozen species including human, all talking at once at every pitch and volume, and all of their translating widgets bellowing too! Some species, like the srivinthish, don’t talk with sound, but they also don’t notice the continual skreeking from their spiracles. Others sing. They call
